Wednesday, June 09, 2010

The Un-Armament that the "Unarmed Peace Activists" Did Not Have

This is pretty much what I always take with me on a cruise. Don't you? A passport, sunscreen, a summer novel, a broad-brimmed hat, and a bunch daggers, short swords, and iron pipes is all one really needs. And a deck chair to throw.

5 comments:

The truth can now be told that Christy has, in spite of being an idiot (can military combat knives, daggers, and short swords really be easily found on passenger vessels? Did the Love Boat have them? Not to mention dozens of lengths of pipe and wooden clubs?) has done me the favor of raising a question about the lack of firearms - other than the makeshift firebomb.

The Hamas supporters on the ship knew that if they shot at the Israelis there would be film of it and they would have lost the pretense of being peaceful. Also it would have justified the Israelis in shooting them in return. It would have resulted in a propaganda black eye for them rather than for Israel. They would have been exposed for the Hamas-supporting would-be murderers they all are.

A parallel question, which did not occur to a bigot like Christy, is why didn't the Israelis have Uzis? Same reason: to avoid giving the other side footage of heavily armed Israeli commandos boarding their ever-so peaceful ship.

Which was exactly the Hamas supporters' purpose all along, to wage propaganda war. They blew it by, like Helen Thomas, letting the mask slip.

This video is the evidence that they were so full of violent intentions that they could not pretend otherwise, even for a moment and even in hopes of a propaganda victory.

There purpose was to persuade Western morons like Christy and Damien that supporting Hamas is somehow a peaceful and non-racist thing to do. The Christys and Damiens of the world, with their European antisemitic predilections, are easy to persuade.

The parallel with the conflict between the PA and Hamas is clear. The PA is willing to lie about peaceful intentions in English while saying the opposite in Arabic, and to pretend to negotiate. The Hamas are literalists who cannot bear to even make the pretense of peaceful intentions. So too the two groups on the peace flotilla.

The six ships who made their political statement against the blockade and then were towed to Ashdod harbor, pretending that there was something peaceful about supporting Hamas. They were like the PA, sometimes peacefully defending violence, other times waging violence themselves.

The people aboard the Mavi Marmara were more like Hamas. No matter the consequences and the certainty of failure, and the damage to their cause (Do you think the Israelis were not delighted to find the caches of weapons on the Mavi Marmara? They were.) they had to act out their violence and racism no matter what.

A local note is that, superficially at least, Christy has become an Israeli. Because he was such a despicable juvenile racist piece of squat when pretending to be "Abood", I have begun moderating his comments to spare myself and everyone else reading his venting his racism.

So now he, like an Israeli, is trying futilely to get past a screen of media controlled by his opponents and which distorts and misrepresents. Doesn't feel so good, does it, boyo?

His similarity to an Israeli ends there though. Israelis are good people with honorable purposes. Christy isn't.

The Israelis are trying to get the truth of the situation out to the world. Christy on the other hand is s determined liar. Christy actually claimed that the combat knives, daggers, and short swords were kitchen knives from the ship's galley. And that the cache of iron pipes, clubs, and slingshots just happened to be lying about the ship, just as they might be lying about any ship. The lying here isn't that of the pipes and the knives.

The frustration Israelis feel in the face of a wall of lies, is what Christy now feels in his inability to get past my tiny wall of truth. Doesn't feels so good, does it, Boyo?

Jasmin wrote her usual vulgar racist trash but it isn't worth mentioning except that it reminded me of Shakespeare's play "The Tempest".

In it Prospero is a benign wizard who has landed on a remote mysterious island. Among the beings he finds there is the wild half-human half-monster creature, Caliban. Prospero teaches him to speak and takes him as his servant.

Caliban complains that his master has taught him to speak but "the only good of it is that now I know how to curse."

So too with Jasmin. All she seems to have learned of English is how to curse. Though one suspects that her speech in Arabic is no less crude. She is a Taliban Caliban.

Generally speaking, weapons on vessels of any kind are strictly controlled by the captain through a Master at Arms (MA). No captain or ships compliment intentionally allows pipes, pieces of iron, etc., unstowed while underway and not conducting repairs. Such unstowed materials become, in naval parlance, missle hazards (loose objects that fly about as the vessel pitches with the sea). In English this situation echos into the common speach in the term "loose cannon."

It should be noted that weapons are also generally secured to prevent a restive crew from engaging in mutiny. For all sorts of reasons, the crew compliment is almost never issued weapons unless they are ships officiers or those officers have ordered or sanctioned the arming of the crew.

Anyone who has even minimal experience on sea-going vessels understands that the only reason knieves, iron pipes, and any other blunt instrument would be found unsecured in its proper place (if materials), or unsecured by a Master at Arms (if weaponry) is to repel boarders or commit acts of violence.

Regardless of whether one describes the Israeli naval operation as an embargo or quarantine, that navy has the right under international law to board and search neutral vessels for contraband and neutral vessels are bound under international law not to resist. Any disputes that arise are dealt with in courts of admiralty. A neutral vessel not carrying contraband has no justification to resist.

Lastly, the United States is preparing, with other nations, to impose a naval quarantine on Iran where these same rules used by the Israelis off the coast of Gaza will apply.